Narrative Causality
by lightningpastry
Summary: Candace calls it a "Mysterious Force." It's been changing the course of history since before the first invention of the wheel. We've all seen it at work. This time, it's hard at work providing backstory for some old favorites, as well as a handful of homage characters a la Phinabunk and Gerb.


_Narrative Causality_

A Phineas and Ferb Fanfic

By [Figure Out Pseudonym Later]

* * *

 _Ireland, 964 AD_

The day began as any other for Phionnias Flynn and Fergus O'Fletcher.

The two lads had decided what to do with their day sometime in the morning. In the hours since, they had felled and milled several hundred trees, mined several hundred tons of iron ore and cast it into hull plates and braces, mixed and heated three thousand gallons of black pitch, built a kiln from the stones in the field behind their house, and turned beach sand into forty circular panes of glass two inches thick.

Once the materials were all gathered, it only took them three _Suity-up booty-up diddly-deedly-da_ s and one _Doo da bee dee dah dah dah dah dah dah_ to assemble the parts into a three hundred foot submarine.

Phionnias and Fergus were eating lunch on top of the conning tower with Eisabaella, Bairrejeet, and Beofford and discussing all of the marine life they'd seen through the portholes that morning when Phionnias espied a distant object on the horizon.

"What'cha seein'?" Eisabaella asked.

"I'm not sure," Phionnias replied. "It's too far away for me to make out." (Eisabaella froze involuntarily at the mention of making out – Phionnias failed to notice, of course).

"I wish we had some kind of compact hand-held device that we could hold up to our eyes and make distant images appear closer," Phionnias mused. A moment later, he snapped his fingers and cried, "Hey Fergus, I know what we're going to do tomorrow!"

Upon finishing their lunch, they returned belowdecks and set course for the mysterious object on the horizon. Once they were nearer, Bairrejeet put up the periscope.

"It is a Viking longship!" he wailed. "Oh, they will raid our lands and burn our homes to the ground!"

"Nonsense!" Beofford returned. "That's why we brought the torpedoes!" He hurried over to the tactical console. "Besides, even if they made landfall, the MacStomm clan would defend our village and drive them out. We have a song about it, you know. OOOOOOOHHHHHH…" he began, before Fergus cut him off with an upraised hand.

Fergus blinked, and Phionnias nodded. "Fergus is right. We can't just go firing torpedoes at them unless we know their intentions. Eisabaella," he directed, "match course and velocity with the longship. Come alongside and prepare to surface."

"Aye, captain," Eisabaella saluted.

After they surfaced, Phionnias and Fergus climbed out onto the deck of the submarine, making sure to stand well clear of the ICBM hatches. They looked out over the water at the longship, which they could now see was crewed only by a burly red-haired Viking and what appeared to be a panda.

"Ahoy there!" Phionnias called. "Captain Aethelred, is that you?"

The Viking looked up. "Oh, Phionnias! Fergus! Ahoy! Aye, it's me. I'm coming back in. Got me another lecture," he said proudly, patting the folded easel leaning against the mainmast. "Double checked my math!" he said, patting his slides. "They won't run me out of town for forgetting a negative sign _this_ time!" he crowed. "At this speed, I should arrive sometime tomorrow morning."

"Well, good luck!" Phionnias called. "Fergus and I have already made plans for tomorrow, but if we finish in time, we'll try to stop by and see the rest of the lecture." He turned to the panda. "Great work trimming that sail, Petunia."

Petunia doffed a peaked helmet and let a little slack out of the rope she was holding.

"Well, we need to be getting home," he said, grabbing one of the lower rungs of the ladder on the conning tower. We'll see you tomorrow morning, Aethelred." Fergus just waved.

"Such nice boys," Aethelred said to Petunia, as they closed the hatch behind them and the submarine dived.

Back inside the sub, Phionnias explained what had happened.

"Aethelred?" Bairrejeet shouted. "Ooh, I simply cannot stand Aethelred's lectures! He always uses such ridiculous sign conventions. It is no wonder he always ends up reversing a minus sign somewhere!"

"I know!" Beofford agreed. "There's only one thing worse than a nerd, and that's a nerd with confusing sign conventions! I'm going to have the whole MacStomm clan there waiting for him when he shows up tomorrow!"

"You can't just run him out of town," Phionnias protested.

"Of course not," Beofford agreed. "We only drive him off if he's wrong." He ignored the skeptical looks he was getting. "What? The rules are the rules. I don't make 'em."

"In any case," Fergus injected, "we should be getting home. It's almost dark."

They arrived home just before sunset, and found Caendace waiting for them. She ran off, waving her arms and shouting, and returned a few moments later with their mother, Glaenda Flynn.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a kraken had appeared and carried the submarine off into the depths in the intervening time.

"All right Caendace," Glaenda said. "What was it you wanted to show me?"

Caendace stared at the empty harbor. "Huh? But it was right here!"

"Hi kids," Glaenda said to Phionnias and Fergus.

"Hi mom," Phionnias said.

Fergus blinked an expressive greeting.

"I hope you kids had fun. Who wants chocolate potato pound cake?" she asked.

"Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh…" Caendace just gibbered over and over.

* * *

 _Danville, 1964_

The beeping of Calvin's wristwatch roused him suddenly from his slumber. He was wide awake and fully alert in a fraction of a second, prepared for imminent combat by reflexes ingrained in him during his OWCA agent training.

Calvin silenced the watch, then looked around for the zookeepers. Luckily, none of them had noticed him wearing the watch. Really, the greater mystery was how none of the hundreds of zoo patrons each day ever noticed that he was wearing it.

He didn't exactly go to great lengths to hide it. Sometimes, he just lay out on the large flat rock in his enclosure, sunning himself, legs splayed out around him. Somehow, nobody noticed.

Calvin slid into the water, floating casually toward the entrance to his secret lair. He made the switch with the dummy "Calvin," donned his fedora and Agent C persona, and slid down the vacuum-sealed tube to his underground lair.

He landed in the swivel chair in front of a large screen. A large man in a blue uniform with a square chin, a bushy white mustache and matching grey-white crew cut filled the screen. Agent C noted epaulets and Admiral's bars on the man's uniform.

"Good morning, Agent C," the man said. "As you may recall, Marshal Moniker retired yesterday after fifteen years of distinguished service. As such, he will no longer be giving you your assignments."

"I have been assigned to take his place," the man continued. "I am Admiral Appellation, and I will be giving you your assignments from now on. I would also like to introduce you to my unpaid intern, Francis."

"Hello," came a voice from somewhere offscreen.

"Francis!" Admiral Appellation barked, turning to the offscreen intern. "That wasn't your cue to talk! Just because I introduced you doesn't mean you get to talk to the agents!"

"Sorry, sir," the voice said. "It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't," the admiral growled, narrowing his eyes, "Or I'll demote you back to Unpaid Intern Intern."

"No, please, sir!" the voice pleaded. "I worked hard to make Unpaid Intern! I'll do anything!"

Admiral Appellation returned his gaze to the camera and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry you had to see that, Agent C. You know how interns can be. Anyway…"

A box appeared beside his head on the screen, and a handful of images appeared in it as Admiral Appellation talked. "Your old nemesis, Baron Babyface, seems to be up to no good. Last week, he checked out a book on the mythologies of the native tribes of Tri-State Area, and yesterday, he was seen taking pictures of a stone slab in the Danville Museum of Natural History, _in clear violation of the "No Flash Photography" signage_."

"To make matters worse," he continued, "his recent purchases include three hundred vacuum tubes, an industrial size cooling fan, a rotary telephone, and an 8-track tape player. I don't think I need to remind you of the destruction he's capable of with such cutting-edge technology," Appellation admonished.

Calvin nodded grimly, wide-eyed.

"We don't know what his evil plan is yet," the admiral concluded, "but it can't be good. Your mission, Agent C, is to find out what he's up to, and _put a stop to it._ "

Calvin saluted, then jumped out of the swiveling chair and into the Calvin-copter. He took off toward Baron Babyface's headquarters.

* * *

 _Ireland, 964 AD_

The next morning, the whole village was up in arms and standing on the dock in full combat regalia as the lone longship came into the harbor. Petunia hopped out and expertly moored the boat to the dock.

Aethelred received nothing but hostile stares as he set up his easel and slides. When he was done, he stared at the villagers nervously and cleared his throat.

Beibhinny MacStomm growled, "What nonsense have you brought today, Aethelred?"

Aethelred gestured to the title slide with his pointer rod. "Today's lecture is entitled 'On the Inverse Relationship between Distance and Gravitational Force."

Beibhinny grunted, a signal to get on with it.

For the most part, the lecture went about as well as could be expected, until he reached his conclusion:

"…so you can see, the gravitational force between two objects is proportional to the respective masses of the two objects, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The coefficient at the front of the equation is something I've taken to calling the Universal Gravitational Constant, and has units of…"

Someone in the back raised a hand. Aethelred could barely see it – the owner was so short that only the hand was visible over the shoulders of his neighbors. "You have a question?" Aethelred asked.

A curiously high pitched voice came from the back of the crowd. "I believe your lecture was titled 'On the Inverse Relationship between Distance and Gravitational Force.' According to your findings, would it not have been more correct to call it 'On the Inverse Relationship between the _Square_ of Distance and Gravitational Force?'" The voice had an edge of smugness in it.

The villagers glared at the equation, then at Aethelred, who looked around uneasily. "Well, yes, but that title was…unwieldy?" Sweat poured down his face; he hadn't given the title of the lecture any serious thought, and now he desperately groped for some excuse that would salvage his lecture.

"But it's still incorrect, isn't it?" asked Beibhinny. She turned to the crowd, and yelled, "Hey everyone! The Viking is wrong!"

A battle roar rose from the crowd. Aethelred, panicking, pointed to his slide. "Hey, come on guys! All of my findings are right! They're even all positive – I set up my sign conventions that way just for you! Don't I get any credit for that?"

His only answer was the crowd's battle roar. He jumped back into the ship ahead of the angry mob, where Petunia was waiting for him, having already untied the mooring ropes at the first sign of inaccuracy in his lecture. As they sailed away, Aethelred complained to Petunia, "Just once, it would be nice to find an audience who appreciated me."

* * *

 _Danville, 1964_

 _Babyface Villainy, Ltd.!_

The evil Baron Kraft Babyface sat in a chair in the penthouse suite of the BVL building. He was mostly bald but for a single wisp of red hair that sprung up from the top of his forehead and curled over on itself. His eyes were a merciless black, and his face looked deceptively young for his fifty-five years. His face might have been described as "cute" were it not for the uncompromising malice behind the façade. His smile was predatory, and he had lost all but one of his teeth, an upper incisor – the product of hundreds of battles against his reptilian nemesis. His lab coat hung loosely over a black turtleneck.

Inset into the armrest of his chair were four buttons that his fingers drummed across absently. He watched the door, then checked his watch, then watched the door some more.

 _Any second now_ , he thought.

A moment later, a heavy weight bumped against the door, and both door and frame shook.

 _What perfect timing_ , the baron thought.

There came a second thump, and the door frame shook again.

The baron's finger hovered over one of the buttons on the arm of his chair, just for a moment… _Now!_ the baron thought, and stabbed his finger down on the button.

The door swung open, and a large green reptile came charging into the room, thrown off balance by the unexpected lack of resistance. It tried desperately to arrest its momentum, and skidded to a halt in the middle of the floor, glaring at Baron Babyface.

Baron Babyface pressed another of the buttons on his chair. Six steel restraints slid suddenly out of the floor, pinning the crocodilian's limbs, snout, and tail to the ground.

"Hahahahahaha!" the baron crowed, "I have caught you again, Calvin the Crocodile! Do you like my latest trap? It's made of reinforced steel, and you cannot escape it!"

He stared at the creature in mock disappointment. "Why aren't you wearing your fedora, Calvin the Crocodile? They're standard OWCA issue. Did you really think I wouldn't recognize you just because you weren't wearing a little brown hat? Even after you tried to break into a penthouse apartment on the fortieth floor of a skyscraper in a major metropolitan area? Do you really think all reptiles look alike to me? What kind of idiot do you take me for, Calvin the Crocodile?"

When he received no response, he stood and walked toward the captured beast, a puzzled look on his face. "Wait…unless you're…Alvin the Alligator? It can be so hard to tell the difference…"

He seemed to realize what he'd just said as he examined his captive, then sighed to himself, vexed. "I'm sorry, Calvin the Crocodile or Alvin the Alligator. It's true. I can never remember how to tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile."

"Luckily," he said, perking up, "I won't have to anymore, now that I have _this!"_ He held up an 8-track tape, then inserted it into what was clearly a brand-new 8-track tape player. He pressed play, and turned back to the trapped…crocodile? alligator? He supposed he'd find out in just a moment.

"Don't you want to know what's on this tape? Well you'll find out in just a minute…oh, who am I kidding, I just have to tell you!"

He took a deep breath, then shouted excitedly, "It's a compilation of all of the OWCA agents' theme songs!"

He stared at the massive saurian on the ground, grinning excitedly. His captive returned his stare, seemingly unimpressed.

"Not even a gasp? Oh well. I guess I can't say I'm surprised. For a secret organization, OWCA sure doesn't take its agents' secret identities very seriously. For crying out loud, I already know that you're either Alvin the Alligator or Calvin the Crocodile. I know your first name! And nobody even cares! And then they just leave this tape lying around with all of the agents' personal details? It's sloppy. Very sloppy ind-oh hey, it's starting!"

The music came from the machine, a fast energetic beat and a singer with a deep rich voice and several accompanying altos.

 _Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Alvin!  
He's an apex predatory grey-green reptile of action!  
He's from the Yangtze River Valley or the southeastern USA!  
You can tell he's not a crocodile  
Lower teeth can't be seen in his smile  
And whenever you hear this sound, you're gonna be his prey!  
(Rumble)  
He's Alvin!  
Alvin the Alligator!_

"Aha!" Baron Babyface cried as the song finished. "Lower teeth! That's what it was!"

He scratched his head as he tried to work out the complex set of double-negatives (triple-negatives?) in the song lyrics. He almost had it figured out when the next song on the tape started playing and interrupted his train of thought.

He ran over to the 8-track player to stop the tape before Agent B's theme song started playing, but it was too late.

 _Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Barry!  
He's a mostly nomadic North American bovine of action!_

Baron Babyface stopped the music before the song played any further. He returned to the captive on the floor and examined its teeth. The fourth tooth from the front jutted up from the lower jaw. A crocodile, then.

 _No_ , he reminded himself. _Not just *a* crocodile. Calvin the Crocodile. Agent C. My nemesis._

"Ah, Calvin the Crocodile…!" he simpered. "Now that introductions are complete and I have gloated about capturing you (sadly, not in that order), it's time to show you today's evil –Ifier!"

He strode over to a sheet draped over what could only be some kind of large ray weapon. He seized one corner of the sheet, and pulled it clear of the -Ifier in a single swift motion, revealing the weapon underneath.

"Behold!" he thundered. "The Timeifier!"

He turned back to his captive, whom he could (finally) identify as Calvin the Crocodile. "I bet you'd like to know what the Timeifier does, wouldn't you? Well since you're safely captured and can't get out, I'll tell you!"

"You know how our fights normally go? How you always inexplicably get free of your trap, sabotage my –Ifier, and then it explodes? And how when it explodes, it always seems to destroy the walls and ceiling of this penthouse?

"Or sometimes, seemingly for no reason at all, when I gain the upper hand in one of our fights, some kind of bird or random flying object comes out of nowhere and knocks me over or hits the self-destruct button on my –Ifier?

"Well, I'll let you in on a little secret, Calvin the Crocodile. The first time the penthouse was destroyed, I just went to sleep and figured I'd rebuild it in the morning. But when I woke up, it was already reconstructed! I don't understand how it happens, but every time the penthouse is destroyed, it is inexplicably returned to pristine condition by the next morning!

"I tried everything to try and figure out what was going on. I set up security cameras, but they ran out of battery during the night. When I tried security cameras that plugged into the wall, there was a city-wide blackout. I stayed up all night once, watching to see how it happened, but I had to go to the bathroom. By the time I'd returned, the penthouse was completely rebuilt! It was like there was some sort of mysterious force that wanted me to focus my time and energy on my evil schemes rather than rebuilding my apartment!

"There was only one reasonable explanation: that Danville represents a nexus in space-time, a sort of tangle in causality, if you will. I started doing some research, and found that the tribes native to the Danville area recorded a number of seemingly unrelated events that always seemed to happen at the right place and the right time to cause an otherwise difficult-to-resolve situation to wrap itself up nicely, or to make otherwise boring days interesting, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

"For instance, if I'm interpreting my flash photographs of the cave paintings in the Danville Museum of Natural History correctly, the paintings depict a story of two boys who invented the wheel long before the wheel was supposed to exist. They had an enjoyable afternoon until, in a totally unrelated circumstance, a caveman used a pointed stick to cause a mammoth stampede, which destroyed the invention before a cavegirl could show it to a cavewoman. That's it. No explanation for why the other caveman felt the need to poke a mammoth with a stick that day.

"The primitive Danville tribes worshiped this Mysterious Force as a god. Some especially backward groups even still believe in it today, calling it 'Narrative Causality.' I've started using the term myself – it has a nice ring to it.

"As I am an evil scientist, I have formulated my evil hypothesis. Now it's time for me to use my Timeifier to perform my evil experiment, collect evil data, and analyze it (evilly) so that I may use my newfound information to _take over the entire Tri-State Area!_ "

The Baron curled his fingers and laughed, an errant bolt of lightning crackling across the sky behind him.

Baron Babyface turned quickly and gestured at the clear blue sky. "Did you see that, Calvin the Crocodile? There was a bolt of lightning to accompany my evil laughter, and now the sky is cloudless again! See? Inexplicably perfectly timed events that occur only to complement my evil scheme and heighten dramatic tension! That's Narrative Causality at work, Calvin the Crocodile!"

He crossed the room to his Timeifier and pressed the "On" button. The machine came to life with a whirring hum. He pulled some more levers and pressed some more buttons to calibrate the machine, but was interrupted by a sound from the room behind him. He turned around in time to hear the 8-track player start a new song.

 _Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Doo bee doo bee doo bah  
Calvin!  
He's a semi-aquatic carnivorous reptile of action!  
You know he's got a bite force of over five thousand pounds!  
He's OWCA's toughest, without a doubt!  
Cuz he's got armor, a tail, and a snout  
So get out of the water whenever you hear this sound!  
(Rumble)  
He's Calvin!  
Calvin the Crocodile!_

Baron Babyface looked down at the floor, saw the fedora-less crocodile still imprisoned in six steel rings. _If Calvin the Crocodile was still imprisoned_ , he wondered, _how did the music start?_

At that moment, his chair swiveled toward him, revealing a large grinning saurian in a fedora. There was a second inexplicable flash of lightning punctuated by ominous music with no discernable source.

"Alvin the Alligator?" he gasped. "But OWCA agents aren't allowed to interfere with other OWCA agents' missions! The OWCA by-laws explicitly state that only one agent is allowed to thwart a villain at a time!"

Seeing the agent's surprised expression, Babyface explained. "A copy of the OWCA by-laws came in the case with the 8-track tape with all the OWCA theme songs."

Another thought struck him then. "Wait, why did you play Calvin the Crocodile's theme song? That doesn't even make sense. Wouldn't it have made more sense to replay your own theme song, even though we've already heard it? Playing someone else's theme song is poor character exposition, Alvin the Alligator."

The massive reptile turned its head sideways, baring its teeth, and pointing at one near the front.

The baron squinted, but the details were too small to make out. "I can't see what you're trying to point at. I'm too far away. I really wish I had one of those things…" he snapped his fingers, trying to come up with the name. "It's compact, you hold it in your hand, you use it to make distant objects appear closer…Binoculars!" His eyes widened with recognition, and then his expression soured.

"Of course, I don't _have_ any binoculars anymore because _somebody_ broke them last September," he said, glaring, "So I'll just have to get a closer look myself." He pointed an accusing finger as he stalked over. "This would be a lot easier if you could talk, you know." The agent shrugged.

The baron stared at the mouth for a minute, perplexed. Then he saw it. Comprehension dawned. "Bottom teeth…" he breathed, eyes widening. "But that would mean the reason _that_ crocodile didn't have a fedora was because…"

Calvin the Crocodile grinned nastily and nodded. A scaly finger hovered over the button on the chair's arm.

Baron Babyface took off running back toward the Timeifier, and started frantically pressing buttons. Calvin the Crocodile pressed the button on the chair.

The steel rings retracted back into the floor, and a wild, angry, fedora-less crocodile surged toward Baron Babyface. The baron stepped aside at the last minute, and pressed one last button. The crocodile slid past Babyface and the Timeifier on the slick tile, then came at him again.

Babyface turned the emitter of the Timeifier at the charging crocodile. "Once I shoot you with the Timeifier, you will be transported a thousand years into the future!" he cackled, flipping the switch to "future." Almost as an afterthought, he added, "Give or take twenty-five years. I haven't worked out all the bugs yet." Having stated his caveat, he tried to aim the ray at the charging crocodile, but it was too late. The crocodile slammed into the Timeifier headfirst, and Babyface's first shot went wide. A Timeifier beam shot out over the Atlantic.

The crocodile thrashed, knocking Babyface's hand across the switch, flipping it to "past." Babyface fired again, and the second shot went wide, as well.

Babyface followed the rays with his eyes, watched the second ray hit the first. A portal opened and the first ray vanished into it.

Everyone froze, trying to comprehend what they had just seen.

Babyface turned to Calvin the Crocodile. "How did that just happen? Those two rays were fired from the same Timeifier! They should have been travelling the same speed! How did the second beam catch up to the first beam, hit it, and transport it into the past?"

Suddenly he realized the answer, and his face turned sour. "Of course. Narrative Causality." Calvin just shrugged.

* * *

 _The North Atlantic, 964 AD_

The storm was fierce, but nothing Aethelred and Petunia couldn't handle. She ran frantically around the boat, tying down some ropes, letting slack out of others. Aethelred turned the tiller, and the boat rose and fell with the waves.

Aethelred opened his mouth to shout something, but a wave came over the side of the boat and filled his mouth with seawater. He spat it out, and opened his mouth to yell again, just in time for a second wave to refill his mouth.

He spat the water out, then looked around to make sure there was no third wave coming. He opened his mouth to yell a third time, and another wave, this one so fast Aethelred didn't know where it came from, filled his mouth.

He kept his mouth closed after that. Petunia seemed to have things under control anyway.

They sailed along without talking, the only sounds the roar of the wind, the crash of the waves, and the snapping of the ropes and sail.

A large and very sudden wave appeared without warning, and lifted the boat high into the air, then just as suddenly dropped it into a trough some fifty feet below.

Aethelred knew the drop would be enough to smash even his sturdily-built boat into timbers. He braced himself for impact.

At that moment, a blue halo appeared in the sky, and some kind of strange blue lightning came from it, striking the ship, Aethelred, and Petunia. All three were wreathed in blue fire that seemed to insulate them from the outside world. The waves, the wind, and the storm all froze around them, and then began to move again, faster. Their ship was still frozen in midair, but the waves started passing much, much faster than they had before. The sun rose, screamed by overhead, and set bare instants later. The moon followed at much the same speed. Then the sun. Then the moon.

Sun. Moon. Sun. Moon. Soon the two orbs blurred into two continuous streaks of gold and silver light across the sky. Petunia stared at him, baffled. Aethelred shrugged at her to signify that he didn't know what was going on either.

After the sun had risen and set a few hundred thousand times, the motions began to slow again, and the sun suddenly stopped in the sky above a tranquil blue sea. The boat came unmoored from its position thirty feet in the air and resumed its drop.

It hit the water below with a crash, and Aethelred heard the wood breaking. He was thrown from the ship, landed in the water and went under. By the time he reached the surface again, the boat had split into several pieces. He paddled over to the largest and latched on.

Petunia came up a moment later and grabbed the same floating piece of wreckage.

"Well, that could have gone better," Aethelred said. "Guess we're drifting the rest of the way, eh Petunia?"

Petunia just shrugged and kept holding onto the wood.

A strong wind picked up without warning and started pushing them westward.

* * *

 _Danville, 1964_

Babyface zigged and zagged around the Timeifier to escape the crocodile. A small scuffle ensued, jostling the Timeifier. It began swinging around, firing random beams into the air.

Babyface took off across the room in a vain attempt to escape the wild crocodile, leaving the Timeifier unguarded. Calvin decided his moment had come and raced toward the damaged Timeifier. He started pressing buttons and flicking switches to try to shut the Timeifier down.

Across the room, things were going poorly for Baron Babyface. The crocodile got a hold of his lab coat as the chase led out onto the balcony. At that moment, the Timeifier swung around, fired one last beam, and both crocodile and lab coat disappeared. Babyface stood there, surprised but unscathed, in his black turtleneck.

The Timeifier sputtered, and smoke rose from behind the console. Its hum grew louder and the emitter began to glow and spit sparks.

"Run!" Babyface shouted. "It's going to blow!"

Calvin hurled himself off the balcony, unfurling his hang-glider. He was safely out of range when a large blue bubble of electricity appeared, engulfing the room. It hung there for a moment, then imploded. The room was empty. There was no sign of the Timeifier or Baron Babyface. They were just…gone.

The glide back to the Danville Zoo was very quiet.

* * *

 _Danville, 1984_

Heinz Doofenshmirtz stood behind his shoulder-mounted bratwurst grill-inator, minding his street vending business, Doofenshmirtz Quality Bratwurst. Business was slow today, as it was every day. No one appreciated the superior workmanship, finer meats, and exotic spices of his bratwurst, he thought darkly.

Two children passed him on the street, making snide comments about bratwurst vendors. _I bet hot dog vendors don't have to put up with this_ , he thought. No, hot dog vendors had their chrome plated carts, and endorsement deals, and fancy blimps. It wasn't fair at all.

It was at that very moment that his first ever customer approached his stand. She was a medium-tall brunette, with purple glasses and hair cropped just above the shoulders.

"Welcome to Doofenshmirtz Quality Bratwurst!" he said, perhaps a little too loudly. _Way to go, Heinz,_ he thought to himself. _Alienate your first ever customer._

"Bratwurst, huh?" the woman asked. She sounded a little like the woman who narrated Kaiser Permanente commercials. "I'll take one."

 _Yes!_ Doofenshmirtz's inner monologue celebrated. Outwardly, he only said "That will be $2.50." She handed him the money.

He took it, then suddenly realized he didn't know where to put it. This was the first bratwurst he'd ever sold, after all. It wasn't like the question of where to put the money had ever come up before.

After patting his various articles of clothing searching for pockets, he eventually decided to put the money in his hat. His hat was surprisingly tall and roomy – it fit the money perfectly.

The woman noticed all of this, and just stared at him during the entire ordeal, clearly unimpressed with his poor planning. After he'd stowed the money in his hat, she stared pointedly and asked "You store your money in your hat?"

"Of course I put the money in my hat!" Doofenshmirtz said defensively. "Where do you put _your_ bratwurst money?"

He returned to his usual disappointment a moment later. "Actually, I've never actually sold one of my bratwursts before," he admitted, "so I've never had to figure out where to put the money until now. Pretty sad, right?"

"You've never sold a bratwurst before?" the woman asked. "I'm surprised. That bratwurst was delicious!"

"You really think so?" Doofenshmirtz asked.

"Yes!" the woman said. "I could really taste the superior workmanship, finer meats, and exotic spices. It was much better than some hot dog from a street vendor, with their garish chrome plating, excessive advertising, and ridiculous blimps."

"I think I'm in love," Doofenshmirtz said.

"What?"

 _Oops,_ Doofenshmirtz thought. _I wasn't supposed to say that out loud._ "Gloves!" he said desperately. "I said 'those blimps always look like gloves.'"

"Um…" the woman said skeptically.

Doofenshmirtz was about to say something snide about someone he knew who would need glove-blimps to cover his hands when there was a flash of blue light and he suddenly felt a lab coat draped over his shoulders. He looked down at himself for a moment, confused.

He was indeed wearing a lab coat. He turned back to the woman, who was staring wide-eyed at something behind him. "Sir," she began, "you have-"

Doofenshmirtz cut her off. "Heinz," he said, extending a hand. "Heinz Doofenshmirtz."

She shook the hand. "Uh. Heinz. Hi. I'm Charlene. Maybe this isn't the time for introductions – your lab coat seems to have a crocodile attached to it."

Heinz looked over his shoulder, surprised. He took a moment to examine its jaw – specifically the placement of its teeth.

There was indeed a crocodile behind him, grinning nastily, its mouth clamped firmly onto the tails of his lab coat. "Oh, great," he said, rolling his eyes. "I've been ambushed by a time-travelling crocodile."

He sighed and turned back to Charlene. "Believe it or not, my foster parents actually warned me this sort of thing might happen. Not the time-travelling part," he said quickly, "but they really were quite thorough about warning me about the dangers of jungle life."

Charlene just kept staring, wide eyed, and backed away slowly.

Doofenshmirtz sighed and turned to the crocodile. "Might as well get this over with, right?"

The crocodile nodded at him, smiling toothily, then opened its jaws and let out a rumbling hiss-growl. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" Doofenshmirtz screamed, and took off running toward the park across the street. The crocodile took off after him at a surprising clip.

Heinz wasn't moving as fast as he would like: the crocodile was gaining ground. His Bratwurst stand was weighing him down. Still, he wasn't about to abandon it just because of some ridiculous reptile. This was his _bratwurst grill-inator_. It would break his heart to have to watch some animal destroy one of his beautiful -Inators.

He ran past a hot dog vendor hawking his wares. He shot the man a glare as he ran past. The man looked up momentarily, saw the whole scene unfolding…and continued to stand behind his hot dog stand.

 _He won't even lift a finger to help me!_ Doofenshmirtz thought. _He would rather see a crocodile eat me than lift a finger to help a bratwurst vendor! Not that I would accept help from a hot dog vendor, of course_ , his subconscious sniffed.

The chase took him around the park in a large circle, back to where he'd left Charlene before. The crocodile was still behind him. Charlene was still frozen, watching the scene unfold, horrified. Doofenshmirtz was still screaming "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" Incredibly, he still hadn't taken a breath since he started screaming.

"Give him your bratwurst stand!" Charlene cried. "If you give him your bratwurst, he'll probably stop chasing you!"

"Never!" Heinz yelled back, taking a short break from the hysterical screaming. "This bratwurst grill-inator is my entire life!" He took a deep breath and started screaming again. "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

As he began his second circuit of the park, the hot dog vendor suddenly stepped out from behind his cart, grabbed the bratwurst stand off his shoulders, and threw it off the path. The crocodile stopped chasing Doofenshmirtz and followed the bratwurst stand.

Doofenshmirtz shot a glare at the hot dog vendor. The impudent upstart had destroyed his bratwurst stand! What a transparent ploy to ruin his competition! _I'll show him_ , Doofenshmirtz thought. _I, Heinz Doofenshmirtz, do hereby swear eternal revenge against all hot dog vendors!_

 _It might take years,_ he thought, _but I will have my revenge. Even if it means I have to build a complicated freeze ray-inator and use it to freeze their hot water boilers…say, that's actually not a bad idea…_

He reached into the pocket of his new-found lab coat. A notepad! Score! He jotted down a brief note: "Build freeze ray-inator to freeze hot dog stand water boilers."

He realized he was still running (and still screaming – he had somehow kept screaming the entire time he was writing in that notebook), so he came to a stop in front of Charlene.

Well, he stopped running in front of Charlene, anyway. It took him a couple more seconds to realize he was still screaming and stop that too.

"Well, that was an ordeal," Charlene said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm…fine, actually," Doofenshmirtz said, surprised. He looked himself up and down. "My bratwurst stand is gone, but I did get this cool lab coat."

"You look cute in that lab coat," Charlene said. "Have you considered a career as a pharmacist?"

"A pharmacist?" Doofenshmirtz asked. "You see a guy in a lab coat and you think 'pharmacist?' Not like 'evil scientist' or something? Why would you think a guy should consider a career in pharmaceuticals based on his appearance, anyway?"

"Well, my community college has a great pre-pharmacy program," she said. "I was actually on my way over there to sign up for classes, and I just happened to stop by your stand for lunch on the way over. You should come with me."

"I can't sign up for community college classes," Heinz protested. "I'm a bratwurst vendor!"

"You _were_ a bratwurst vendor," Charlene corrected. Heinz looked over at the wreckage. The crocodile was finishing up the last of his beautiful bratwurst. He let out a single sob.

"Noooooo," he moaned, watching the last of the bratwurst disappear down the crocodile's gullet. The monster reptile grinned, satisfied, then slithered down a nearby open manhole.

Doofenshmirtz's grief turned to anger. "Curse you, Time-travelling Crocodile!" he cried, shaking his fist at the retreating tail. He suddenly had a strange feeling that he was about to explode, then looked around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. He shrugged to himself. It probably didn't mean anything.

"I think you're overreacting," Charlene said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "The crocodile was just hungry. What could you have done, fought it?"

Doofenshmirtz turned to Charlene. "No, I guess not," he conceded. "But I _will_. I'm going to learn karate. I couldn't have saved my bratwurst stand today, but I'm going to be ready the next time an animal attacks me. No animal will be able to stand before my kung fu!"

At last, the rest of the crocodile's tail disappeared entirely from sight. "I would rather have destroyed the bratwurst stand myself than watch that crocodile eat it all," he told Charlene. "I should have installed a self-destruct button on my bratwurst grill-inator! That way, I could have made that crocodile pay for eating my bratwurst!"

He took out the notepad and made a note to include self-destruct buttons on all of his future -Inators. This tragedy would _not_ be repeated, he swore to himself.

"You sure you don't want to go sign up for classes at my community college?" Charlene asked.

Doofenshmirtz considered. His bratwurst stand was beyond repair, but he'd met a pretty girl who liked his bratwurst. Plus he'd gotten this cool lab coat. Today wasn't a total loss, he decided.

Besides, maybe they'd teach him how to take revenge on the hot dog vendors in college.

"All right," he said, offering Charlene his arm. "Lead the way."

* * *

 _Danville, 1964_

The next day, Agent C entered the OWCA lair and saluted Admiral Appellation on the big screen. Admiral Appellation saluted back.

"Thank you for coming, Agent C," the Admiral began. "Your work yesterday was commendable, if slightly more permanent than usual."

Agent C looked abashed at the reprimand.

"That being said," Admiral Appellation continued, "We have reason to believe that your work may not be done."

Agent C looked up from his lap, surprised.

"Francis here has been doing some digging, and he was able to piece together a few important bits of information about the Timeifier implosion. Explain your findings, Francis," the admiral said, gesturing.

"Thank you Admiral," the intern said. Then, turning to the camera, Francis Monogram said, "We got a look at the settings on the Timeifier right before the implosion. We've cross-referenced those settings against local weather conditions at the time of the accident, and the images we've been able to pull from the bubble itself."

"It seems the bubble was actually a nexus of interwoven space-time threads. Sort of a place where lots of dimensions overlap. We think that Baron Babyface was not actually killed in the accident, just shifted into another dimension. He might even have been shifted into two or three at once – we aren't sure of the ramifications of interdimensional travel yet."

"However, based on our predictions (bear in mind that our evidence is minimal and our predictions are based on a possibly flawed understanding of the laws of interdimensional time travel), we think that Baron Babyface might not be gone for good. There is a distinct possibility that the baron has gained the ability to travel freely between dimensions, and will return to the Tri-State area someday to exact his revenge."

Agent C looked shocked and dismayed at this news.

"Don't worry, Agent C," Monogram continued. "We aren't sure of the exact consequences of the accident. He might not be able to travel entirely freely – there's a very good chance he can only re-enter our dimension when the Mysterious Force he referred to as "Narrative Causality" chooses to interact with it. He might not even have a choice about when he returns to our dimension. So that's good news."

"There's also the chance that he might also have gained some or all of these side effects." He cleared his throat. "He may have gained the ability to defy gravity by floating, become totally incorporeal, been dissolved into a vat of sunscreen, had his hands replaced with magnifying glasses, or even been rendered completely mute."

"However, the most likely side effects we've been able to figure are that his body below the neck has entirely disappeared, he has mentally regressed to the maturity of a toddler, and had his cranium swell to a prodigious size."

The camera returned to Admiral Appellation. "As we cannot be certain that Baron Babyface is permanently vanquished, we are not assigning you a new nemesis at this time. Stay on the alert, Agent C. We will contact you again when we know the fate of the evil Baron Kraft Babyface."

* * *

 _Danville, 1989_

After three days adrift at sea, Aethelred and Petunia the Panda arrived in the Danville Freight Emergency Harbor. They left the planks behind and climbed one of the metal ladders attached to the dock.

Nobody seemed to be nearby, so they headed into town to try to find some food.

There appeared to be an open door on the first building they passed, and people milling about inside. They stopped in to ask for directions, then noticed that there seemed to be food just sitting out on a table. Being three days starved, they helped themselves to some.

As Aethelred ate, he listened to the speaker – a thin, hunchbacked man with a small brown soul patch and a beret. He was too far away to hear most of the speech, but he was able to make out something about horses, and bringing the speaker food.

He clapped politely, then returned his attention to the pie on the table. It was delicious, and vaguely reminiscent of a pastry he'd once eaten at a lecture he'd given in a coastal village in Drusselstein on the structural integrity of wood and why it would make the ideal material for a crankshaft.

He noticed a baking soda volcano on a table on the other side of the room. It was wearing a beret for some reason. He ambled over to it, and Petunia followed him. He stared at the volcano for a while. There was something captivating about this volcano – he couldn't put his finger on it, but this volcano felt somehow…expressive. Like it touched his soul.

"I feel like this volcano is somehow trying to express a universal truth about humanity and our place in the universe," he said to Petunia.

A passing man overheard, then turned to inspect the volcano himself. His eyes widened, then he turned to the gathered audience. "Hey everyone! The Viking is right! This baking soda volcano deserves to be the winner of this poetry slam contest!

The audience cheered. A judge came over and pinned a blue ribbon on the volcano. The volcano erupted, displacing the beret, and everyone cheered, except for the hunchbacked man on the stage who looked like he was taking it personally for some reason.

 _They appreciate my insights_ , Aethelred cheered to himself. _They like me here!_

He was about to say something to Petunia when he realized she was no longer standing next to him. "Hey," he asked to no one in particular, "Where's Petunia?"

He looked around the crowd, but he couldn't find the panda anywhere. At that moment, there came a shout from the food table. "Hey! Who ate all the Doonkelberry pie? That was supposed to be a prize for the winner of the poetry competition!"

Aethelred wiped purple juice from his beard and tried to scrunch down and become less noticeable. Luckily, someone else lent him a hand on that front.

"Boo!" yelled the speaker with the turtleneck and soul patch. "That baking soda volcano didn't deserve to win a Doonkelberry pie! I'm glad someone ate that pie and now you can't give the volcano a prize!"

"Hey!" yelled another voice. "That guy is jealous of the baking soda volcano! I bet _he_ ate the pie out of spite!"

"Me?" cried the long-nosed speaker. "I didn't eat any Doonkelberry pie! Maybe you have Doonkelberry bats. They could easily have eaten all the pie while no one was looking! I've been swarmed by them a few times myself." The man looked vaguely disquieted by the thought of being swarmed by bats.

"Oh, so whenever you're around, Doonkelberry pastries just disappear and 'Doonkelberry bats' are to blame?" said a woman, making sarcastic air quotes with her fingers. "Everyone knows there's no such thing as Doonkelberry bats."

Aethelred sidled quietly out of the room while everyone's attention was on the unfortunate poet. A moment later, there was a clamor, and he turned around just in time to avoid being hit by the man as the crowd threw him out the door and into the street. He heard the man mutter "Oh, this is just Albania all over again."

The man turned to him and said "I really hate poets. Someday, I'm going to take revenge on them. I'm going to build…oh, I don't know. A paper-cut-inator to give them all papercuts, or something. You know, because they're all poets."

He looked thoughtful. "Hmm. That's actually not bad," he said, taking a battered looking notebook out and scribbling something in it. Aethelred looked around for a way to extricate himself from the situation.

At that moment, he felt a tug on his shirt. It was Petunia the panda. "Oh. There you are, Petunia."

She handed him a flyer. "English teacher needed," the flyer proclaimed. "Seeking extraordinary individuals for employment at the Orthodox Western Collegiate Academy. Child care, job training, and child job training provided."

"An English teacher?" Aethelred asked. "Aren't you a little…mute to be an English teacher?"

Petunia nodded.

Aethelred shrugged. "Well, okay then."

He thought for a moment, then asked Petunia, "You know, I'm going to need a job, too. Do you think the Orthodox Western Collegiate Academy would be willing to take me, too?"

Petunia shook her head, eyeing the flyer and looking like she knew something he didn't.

"Hmm," Aethelred said, furrowing his brow. "Well, I'm going to need some kind of job if I want to live here. I like the idea of hanging around places and saying profound things that people agree with...you think that could be a thing?"

Petunia just raised an eyebrow.

Aethelred shrugged. "True. It is more of a hobby than a career. No matter. I'm sure that whatever Mysterious Force brought us here has already set events in motion to make sure I'll be in the right place at the right time for everything to work out."

Petunia eyed him skeptically.

"What?" he asked. "I'm just saying that based on everything that's happened to us over the last 1025 years and three days, I'm prepared to believe that there's a higher power controlling our destinies and that we're here for a reason. You don't think this was all happenstance, do you?"

Petunia looked thoughtful, and ultimately just shrugged.

Aethelred laughed. "Don't worry, Petunia. I'm sure that your being here will have significant consequences of some kind or another for the events to come…whatever they may be."

* * *

 **Bewegen Sie Nicht!** (Disclaimer time)

First and foremost: Dan, Swampy, if you're reading this...

...can I have your autographs? (pleasepleaseplease)

Now that that's out of the way:

Dan and Swampy and the rest of the P&F team have done amazing work. I just want to offer the sincerest form of flattery: imitation. My characters are homages at best, and straight-up borrowed in a few cases. The musical numbers are meant as parody. Again, no desire to step on anyone else's intellectual toes.

I know they're not allowed to take something I've written and make it into an episode. I'm not asking for that. But it would make me happy if they read this and it made them happy.


End file.
